Obviously everybody's different and I can only talk about my artistic process but I hope to be able to answer the questions asked in the introduction to this show.

Most of the time ideas for pieces just pop into my head. I figure out what they mean and where they came from later. For example in this case I knew I wanted to make a pink painting of cartoony flowers and clouds. I wanted it to be unlike any other painting I'd done before so there is no attempt at depicting an illusion of volume or perspective. You can see that some expressionistic-y hoo-ha (the fluttery, smudgey marks just below the topmost left-hand cloud) began to occur in the upper left-hand corner. I wanted to avoid that too. I find that expressionistic marks can be a handy trick to fill up space. That's not what I'm looking for. I covered up some of it and hopefully I'll figure out an interesting way to get rid of the rest of it later on. The vertical bar of pink along the right side of the painting is something I've never done and it makes me uncomfortable. That's good. It's staying

	On the left is a fairly early stage. This painting started as a regular, flat painting and while I liked where the imagery and composition were going, I wanted to give this thing some extra zing. At some point, probably when I was in bed about to fall asleep or maybe I was in the shower, it hit me: "Three-d! That's the way to go!"
The clouds were easy because with them, the chunkier the better. The central flower has been more of a challenge because I want it as smooth as possible and I've had a hard time figuring out how to do that. I started building it up with ripped-up newspaper and acrylic medium which you can see above. It was chunk-a-rama. Finally I decided to use outdoor spackle. This spackle also has an acrylic base so I hope it will stick well and be as archival as the paint. It's also sandable. The first layer of spackle has been a big improvement but I know I'll need to apply at least one more layer. I sanded to first layer to see what would happen and to prepare for the second layer. Bogus re-created action shots (in real life I wear a mask when I sand):		When I was done sanding I noticed an interesting effect: The dust from the sanding looks kind of cool.
The question is, is this an effect I can or want to use? How much of it do I want to use? Do the dust piles on the other 3-d flowers take too much away from any indication of motion the flowers have? Is that bad? How would I duplicate this effect? Would I do it with paint splatters? Paint on some clear acrylic and shake some dust on? Would spraying this dust with hairspray hold it in place well enough for me to go over it with a painted-on sealer? Would a spray blow the dust away? I need a break.
While I was walking away my eyes fell on a couple of other projects I'm working on:
What am I going to do with the edges on this and how about the in-between spaces? It doesn't look this vaginal/organ-y in real life. I think. This idea came from a photo of a dress I saw in a magazine. This is just a test. I think it could be used on a larger scale in a larger painting.	Which eyes go on here? Color? Glow-in-the-dark? Do they go everywhere or just on select nodules? This idea came from a photo of a pillow. The pillow did not have eyes though.

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"Process" page 1, 2 ,3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7, 8, 9, 10

Gallery b Process Introduction b Lounge